ValiRx Shares Rallied 10% After Forming Inaphaea Labs Its tCRO

The ValiRx Plc (LON: VAL) share price rallied 10% after incorporating Inaphaea BioLabs Limited as a new wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company. Inaphaea will be responsible for ValiRx’s translational Contract Research Organisation (tCRO).

The new company will have its headquarters at ValiRx’s MediCity (Nottingham) laboratory and offer multiple pre-clinical and drug discovery testing services to biotech, academic and pharmaceutical researchers. Inaphaea will be the foundation of Valirx’s tCRO.

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ValiRx’s revealed that it would bring back most of the testing being conducted across its drug evaluation pipeline in-house, given that such activities are currently being outsourced to other CROs. Most of these tasks will now be handled by Inaphaea. 

Inaphaea will be able to conduct in vitro and ex vivo testing for Valirx’s in-house pipeline and evaluation projects while offering the same services to external users. Investors cheered the news, a significant step for Valirx that will save it money while generating a new revenue stream for the firm. 

Valirx expects the Inaphaea laboratory to be fully operational in Q2 2023. The lab will apply specialised and standard cell-based technologies to deliver an in-depth biological understanding of each drug candidate throughout the preclinical stages of the drug development process. 

Inaphaea’s initial operations will focus on cancer cell activity, with Valirix planning to add more techniques, including novel data generation and analysis technologies. 

Valirx has hired Dr Dominic Lowen as Senior Scientist and Melissa Barr as Lead Scientist to lead the laboratory team. Dr Andrew Carnegie has been appointed Head of Strategic Commercial Development. 

Dr Suzy Dilly, ValiRx’s CEO, commented: “After a great deal of hard work by the entire ValiRx team, I am pleased to share this news about the formation of Inaphaea, the first step of our longer-term ambition to create the unique tCRO service offering for early stage drug development. Over the next few weeks, we intend to transfer our own projects into the Inaphaea lab to continue their progress. I’m also delighted that after a year of supporting us through our Commercial Advisory Board, Andrew has agreed to join the team of Inaphaea in this full-time position to support the initiation of services.”

*This is not investment advice. 

ValiRx share price.

The ValiRx share price rallied 10.04% to trade at 12.38p, rising from Tuesday’s closing price of 11.25p.